Sunday, October 26, 2008

Pennsylvania Republicans are disavowing an e-mail sent to Jewish voters that likens a vote for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama to events that led up to the Holocaust.

"Jewish Americans cannot afford to make the wrong decision on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008," the e-mail reads. "Many of our ancestors ignored the warning signs in the 1930s and 1940s and made a tragic mistake. Let's not make a similar one this year!"

A copy of the e-mail, provided by Democratic officials, says it was "Paid for by the Republican Federal Committee of PA - Victory 2008."

It warns "Fellow Jewish Voters" of the danger of a second Holocaust due to the threats to Israel from its neighbors and touts Republican presidential candidate John McCain's qualifications over those of Obama.

State GOP officials disavowed the e-mail and said the strategist who helped draft it had been fired.

"The Republican Party of Pennsylvania did not authorize that e-mail," Michael Barley, communications director for the state party, told The Associated Press on Saturday evening.

Barley said a "correction" would be sent out to everyone who received it.

Political consultant Bryan Rudnick was identified as the person responsible for it. Rudnick, reached Saturday night, confirmed that he no longer works for the party, which employed him a few weeks ago as a consultant to do outreach to Jewish voters.

"I had authorization from party officials" to send the e-mail, Rudnick said, but he declined to say who had signed off on it. "I'm not looking to drag anyone else through the mud, so I'm not naming names right now," he said.

Does any sense of morality exist within the Pennsylvania Republicans? This isn't the first story to come out of the Pennsylvania Republican Party over ethics. On Friday, October 24, a story came out in the media of a female McCain staffer, Ashley Todd, who was attacked at an ATM machine by a large, black man, who then carved a "B" on her face for "Barack Obama," after he found out that she worked for the McCain campaign. It turns out that the entire story was a hoax. What is interesting about the Ashley Todd story is not that Todd made up the entire story, even to the point of carving the "B" backwards as if looking through a mirror. That is one crazy, brainwashed lady who will go to the point of lying, and committing a crime, just so she can link Barack Obama with African-American criminals who will not just rob white women at the ATM machine, but also express a political statement of carving "B's" on their faces? What I now find interesting about the Ashley Todd case is that the hoax took place in Pennsylvania, and that the McCain campaign's Pennsylvania communications director attempted to push an incendiary version of the hoax story to the media. According to Talking Points Memo:

John McCain's Pennsylvania communications director told reporters in the state an incendiary version of the hoax story about the attack on a McCain volunteer well before the facts of the case were known or established -- and even told reporters outright that the "B" carved into the victim's cheek stood for "Barack," according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions.

John Verrilli, the news director for KDKA in Pittsburgh, told TPM Election Central that McCain's Pennsylvania campaign communications director gave one of his reporters a detailed version of the attack that included a claim that the alleged attacker said, "You're with the McCain campaign? I'm going to teach you a lesson."

Verrilli also told TPM that the McCain spokesperson had claimed that the "B" stood for Barack. According to Verrilli, the spokesperson also told KDKA that Sarah Palin had called the victim of the alleged attack, who has since admitted the story was a hoax.

The KDKA reporter had called McCain's campaign office for details after seeing the story -- sans details -- teased on Drudge.

The McCain spokesperson's claims -- which came in the midst of extraordinary and heated conversations late yesterday between the McCain campaign, local TV stations, and the Obama camp, as the early version of the story rocketed around the political world -- is significant because it reveals a McCain official pushing a version of the story that was far more explosive than the available or confirmed facts permitted at the time.

The claims to KDKA from the McCain campaign were included in an early story that ran late yesterday on KDKA's Web site. The paragraphs containing these assertions were quickly removed from the story after the Obama campaign privately complained that KDKA was letting the McCain campaign spin a racially-charged version of the story before the facts had been established, according to two sources familiar with the discussions.

The story with the removed grafs is still right here. We preserved the three missing grafs from yesterday:

A source familiar with what happened yesterday confirmed that the unnamed spokesperson was communications director Peter Feldman. Feldman was also quoted yesterday making virtually identical assertions on the Web site of another local TV station, WPXI. But those quotes, which we also preserved here, are also no longer available on WPXI's site, for reasons that are unclear.

This is problematic because the McCain campaign doesn't want to have been perceived as pushing an incendiary story that not only turned out to be a hoax but which police officials said today risked blowing up into a "national incident" and has local police preparing to file charges against the hoaxster.

In a time period of less than five days, we have Pennsylvania Republicans sending out incendiary versions of this hoax story linking the "B" carved into Ashley Todd's face for Barack Obama, signifying that this was a political attack by a supposed Obama supporter and that Obama was responsible for this event. And now we have these same Pennsylvania Republicans sending out email letters to Jewish voters, linking a vote for Obama with the events leading up to the Holocaust. The Pennsylvania GOP denied that they were responsible for these emails, instead blaming the strategist who drafted the email and has been fired for it. The GOP strategist, Bryan Rudnick, claims that he had "authorization from party officials," but declined to state names. At this point, I don't know who was responsible for the anti-Semitic emails--it has descended into a they said / he said argument. The McCain campaign has identified Pennsylvania as a must-win state, even as the Muhlenberg College Pennsylvania poll for 10/21-25/08, shows Obama leading McCain 53 percent to 41 percent. A snapshot of the latest Pennsylvania presidential polls, and the polling data, can be found here. Bottom line here is that Barack Obama has a clear lead in Pennsylvania, and the Pennsylvania Republicans are going crazy? Has it gotten so bad in the McCain campaign's Pennsylvania state offices, which these Pennsylvania state Republican officials have decided to incite the fear of the Holocaust on Jewish voters if they vote for Barack Obama? Does that mean that the Pennsylvanian Republican officials are calling Barack Obama a Nazi? The mind just reels here.

FRANKLIN, Ind. (AP) -- A Republican county election clerk said Friday she has apologized to two employees for distributing copies of Internet blog posting referring to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama as a "young, black Adolf Hitler."

The employees, who had voted for Obama in Indiana's Democratic primary, discovered the printouts at their desks after returning from Labor Day weekend, sheriff's Deputy Doug Cox said in a police report made public this week. One of the workers complained, and surveillance video showed Johnson County Clerk Jill Jackson placing an item on one worker's desk at 5:27 p.m. on the Friday of Labor Day weekend, Cox said.

"She admitted to being responsible for the letter, but only did it as a joke," Cox said. Jackson told Cox she had intended to speak with the workers upon returning to work but forgot.

However, she told The Associated Press on Friday that she did not intend it as a joke but was merely passing along to the workers an item that already was circulating around in the office, much like a fundraising order form or an interesting newspaper article.

"It was no more than an Internet blog that was circulating around the office. There was no motive, no intent," Jackson said, adding that she has apologized to both employees. "I never intended to offend anyone."

The Daily Journal of Franklin first reported the item's contents on its Web site Thursday.

It is almost like the Republicans are just going batshit mad-crazy-insane. There is such fear that the GOP will lose complete control of Congress, where the Democrats could gain a two-thirds majority in both houses to end the GOP filibuster, and the White House. And it is possible, looking at how the American public is overwhelmingly rejecting the GOP's fear-mongering attacks of a Democratic control of both Congress and the presidency. it is getting so bad for the GOP, that they are starting to lash out against Obama and the Democrats with racial attacks, even to the point of linking Obama to Adolf Hitler (but that was just a joke). We are only nine days away from the election. How far deeper into the slime-filled ooze will the Republican Party, and their insane-wingnut supporters, will go in their crazed attacks?